


won't you lower your sword and your shield

by wanderloved



Category: Revolution (TV)
Genre: F/M, M/M, Multi, Uncle/Niece Incest, because it all feels way too natural & right IMO, but i guess that doesn't work for everybody, esp in cm2, i guess, i have a really hard time using that label for charlie/miles, which is fair
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-23
Updated: 2016-02-23
Packaged: 2018-05-22 19:34:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 838
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6091777
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wanderloved/pseuds/wanderloved
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Charlie has never seen the beauty in love - all it's ever done is hurt her. So why would she ever let herself fall in love with the two most destructive people she's ever met?</p>
            </blockquote>





	won't you lower your sword and your shield

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much romeokijai for taking a look at this & helping me feel confident enough to actually post the damn thing. My writing insecurities have been a bitch lately. This kind of writing style still feels pretty foreign to me, but where better to branch out right?

_Don’t expect me to fall in love with you._

Her love has only ever hurt people. Love has left her hands eternally stained, try as she may to scrub the blood away. It leaves her weary, with nothing but memories and grief and a heaviness she can't shake. No way to move forward but to bleed, to fight until she can’t see straight. Her blood is a benediction that will never make up for all that she has spilled.

_This isn’t that kind of story._

She didn’t believe in soulmates before them. Now she’s less certain. Less steadfast. She’s seen what that bond can do, how it can destroy a person from the inside out. She wants no part of it and yet they pull her deeper and deeper with every breath, every touch, every sad bittersweet shared glance. Their hearts are wound together, stitched into one another’s chests with thread of steel and gunpowder and regret. Try as they may, these men will never escape one another. They live inside one another's heads, constant hateful reminders of the best and worst places each has been. One will never be whole without the other, and still she fits between them, afraid to move should she unravel them all at once, unable to grasp the threads before it’s too late.

_Don’t tell me you’ll stay._

They could be spectacular together. They already are, whether she admits it or not. They are the stuff of myth, of legend - a three-headed beast spitting fire, built to raze the world to the ground. A Hydra, ready to devour anything in its path. Sharp teeth and claws and venom dripping from every pore as they writhe together in the dark, as bullets rain and blades glint in the firelight. What else could two monsters and the woman ever bound between them hope to become? 

_Everybody leaves eventually, even you._

She could get used to it if she let herself. Bass reading aloud from books of poetry, Miles scoffing and pretending not to love every second of it as his fingers absent-mindedly graze her bare skin. The way their eyes follow her from across the room when they think she’s not looking, just because they can; the way they hold her through the nightmares she can’t shake without saying a word or trying to fix her. They just understand, her twin generals who carry the weight of all their sins on their backs and in their hearts. It’s bliss. There’s no talk about the future or the past, and it’s so easy. Too easy. Frighteningly easy. She relishes in their lips on her neck and between her thighs, the way they worship at her altar together when the sun dips low on the horizon. She finds a new kind of peace in those moments, rich and wonderful, but fear too, inescapable in the back of her mind even in the midst of ecstasy.

_Maybe even me._

Because admitting to them how badly she burns, how terrified she is of smouldering until nothing is left but a hard, blackened piece of coal, is out of the question. Admitting that she could love them – that she is still capable of love – would doom them to the fates of every other person she has ever held close. She’s lost them all, and no matter how hard she loves she can’t bring them back to her. Her love is poison, she knows that now, withering all it touches.

_But maybe…_

She should give them up. Push them away, make them see why she can’t give them all she wants to, but she isn’t that strong. No, Charlie Matheson is many things, but she isn’t selfless. She may be wrong, she may be toxic and dirty and maybe a little deranged these days, but she couldn’t get rid of them if she tried. Earth can spring back from the Blackout, from the bombs that dropped on Atlanta and Philly. But that kind of catastrophe, what would happen if she walked away for good, is something the world would never recover from. They wouldn’t let it.

_Maybe we could be the exception._

They’re awful and messy and anyone could see how easily they could self-destruct. And yes, they can be cruel and vicious. Maybe it doesn’t feel worth it when Miles lashes out, his quick biting tongue searing them with harsh words. And maybe Bass is jealous and insecure, maybe he relies too much on them to ensure his sanity. Maybe, just maybe, Charlie is colder and harder than she used to be, maybe she holds herself at a distance to protect herself, but it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t work. She could never have predicted a love like this – complicated and twisted and ever so secret – but it’s good and right and it fills her up until her heart could almost burst. It’s not the happiness she once imagined for herself, the simple life she’d once been promised, but maybe it’s better.

_Maybe we’re a story all of our own._


End file.
